We wish you a merry … May? We were wearing shorts when the pumpkin beers came out, and now it’s Christmas in May — Peaks and Pints just can’t contain our excitement for spruce tips in craft beer. Spruce beer actually has a long history, especially in colonial America, and within multiple naval traditions. When Captain Cook sailed the Pacific in the 1700s his crew drank spruce beer to help ward off scurvy. Of course boiling the spruce probably destroyed all of the vitamin C making it useless as a scurvy cure, but being beer it probably helped ward off boredom and mutiny. Spruce tips can either be used to bitter and flavor a beer in place of hops, or as a flavorful ingredient in addition to hops. It takes the right kind of beer to compliment the citrusy and sometimes piney flavor of the spruce, but when it’s done right it can taste like beer, candy, and Christmas got together to throw a party in your mouth. Today, Peaks and Pints throws a spruce party in your mouth with our Craft Beer Crosscut 5.27.17: A Flight of Spruce.
New Belgium Anne-Françoise Spiced Dark Ale (Lips of Faith)
9.5% ABV, 25 IBU
Kim Jordan was New Belgium’s first bottler, sales rep, distributor, marketer and financial planner, earning her current title as CEO and making New Belgium what it is today. What started as a door-to-door hustle has clearly paid off, as New Belgium has since been cranking out notable beer and even more notable green awareness practices: the company became the first wind-powered brewery in the United States in 1998 and continues to find ways to be more environmentally efficient. Anne-Francoise Pypaert helped Brewmaster Peter Bouckaert craft the recipe for this special batch. The result: a dark, strong, chocolaty dry beer brewed with spruce tips, French Sprisselspalt, grains of paradise, spicy Liberty and Willamette hops and medium-toasted American oak.
Anchor Christmas Ale
6.5% ABV, 28 IBU
Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco brews a slightly different Happy New Year/Christmas Ale (a.k.a. Our Special Ale) every winter. It’s dark brown in color, full-bodied, and 2016’s batch is a deep mahogany brown with a creamy, tan head and boasts aromas of fruitcake, molasses and spruce. The beer tastes of a roasted caramel malt, with notes of spiced chocolate and nuts. And it has a rich, smooth, and velvety mouthfeel. Anchor has released a holiday beer every year since 1975, making the brewery one of the great-granddaddies of the craft-brewing scene.
Crux PCT Porter
5.5% ABV, 30 IBU
The Pacific Crest Trail stretches from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, covering more than 2,600 miles along the way. On average, it takes thru-hikers about five months to complete the trek. Most hikers start in the south, and by the time they make it into Oregon, they’ve built up a mighty powerful thirst. Enough PCT hikers stop in Bend, Oregon for a shower, a civilized meal and craft beer that Crux Fermentation Project decided to brew PCT Porter just for them and the organization that supports the hikers, Pacific Crest Trail Association. Kick off the hiking boots, pull one of these out of our cooler and enjoy this velvety, chocolate porter with a small bitter bite at the back. It’s an easy drinking porter with notes of espresso, spruce tips, vanilla and caramel with part of the proceeds benefiting the PCTA, which is awesome.
Fort George The Optimist
6.2% ABV, 50 IBU
That is an awesome craft beer! We mean that! After several sips of Fort George’s The Optimist we find my new enthusiasm streaming from us like a Pixar-produced rainbow! Suddenly we could stare at the Pacific Ocean for hours! Hello, spring onions, garlic, lemons, grapefruit and pine! Let’s put our heads together and solve some of our shared problems! Creamy mouthfeel! Smooth bitterness! Yes, we believe everybody’s just trying to do their best and no one’s out to take something from someone else! Thanks for asking! Spruce tips and pine needles on the finish! Thank you!
Knee Deep Simtra Triple India Pale Ale
11.25% ABV, 131 IBU
Knee Deep Simtra whops the nose with dank pine, punchy green onion and hints of garlic. Toasted malts underscore explosive hop flavors: Onion splashes down first, then transitions into resinous pine, spruce tip, floral buds and grass countered by strong grapefruit, pineapple, blood orange, melon and lemon peel sweetness. Very bitter but the bitterness is countered by prominent fruit sweetness. It sports some boozy sweetness and a bit of heat in the finish but the high ABV is well masked. Alcohol presence takes away slightly from the hop flavors but it’s still deceptively drinkable at 11.5 percent.
LINK: Spruce beers
